Month: February 2017

I was planning on finishing this later, but there’s a storm coming and I want to get it done in case we lose power. This week’s Wordbound prompt was: A character realizes something as they look up at the night sky.

An Excerpt

Mia slowly opened the door and peeked inside. She could see Will fast asleep on the bed. This was it. She had to make her choice. In a moment of panic, she turned and ran outside, the knife still clutched in her hand. She crashed into the railing, bracing herself and taking a deep breath. As she stared up at the stars sparkling above the water she realized that she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t kill him. He’d done nothing wrong. Yes, it would get her everything she’d wanted for so long, but this wasn’t the way to do it. There had to be something else she could do.

Writing Goal Updates

This was a good writing week. I’ve been mostly working on my superhero story, since it’s been the easiest to focus on, although I did take a little break to work on the short story I started last week.

I set a goal for myself of writing 500 words a day and I met it. I was going to set it higher, but I thought I should start with something that would definitely be manageable. I usually ended up writing more than the 500 w0rds, since most of the time it’s just getting started that’s my problem. Once I start writing a bit, it’s easier to keep going and write more, but I’ve been so distracted lately that it’s been difficult just starting to write something. It’s much easier when I have a concrete number that I have to reach, like during NaNoWriMo. I think I’m going to stick with the goal of 500 words a day in general, but set it higher for days when I don’t have much going on and have more time to write. I wrote over 5000 words this week, which is probably more than I’ve written in the last few weeks combined. Hopefully I’ll be able to reach the same goal this week.

This week’s Wordbound prompt was: Put a character in an abandoned building or space. I used it to start a short story I’ve been wanting to write.

An Excerpt

“It’s been completely abandoned for about a year now,” the realtor said.

“Why is that?” April asked.

“Supposedly it’s haunted,” she answered, “We’ve had a bit of trouble selling the place.”

“Do you believe it’s haunted?” April asked, running her hand along the window sill. The realtor hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she answered, “There have been some strange things happening here over the last couple of years, ever since…”

“Since?” April said.

“Well, I guess I am legally obligated to tell you…” the realtor said, “About five years ago, a young woman was killed here. Her parents moved away soon after she died. We’ve had a few people move in since then, but none of them have lasted more than a couple months.”

“What was her name?” April asked.

“Nora Logan,” she answered.

“What happened to her?” April asked.

“She was murdered,” the realtor answered, “Stabbed. Most people around here think it was her boyfriend, but there was no real evidence against him, so he was never arrested.”

They stood in silence as April stared out the window and watched the neighbor across the street get his mail.

“I’ll take it,” April said.

Writing Goal Updates

I didn’t write much this week, but I worked a little bit on both of my projects and this short story. I was distracted this week and didn’t actually follow my daily word count goals, but I’m going to try again this week. I think that’s definitely a step in the right direction to keep me writing, but it’s just so hard to concentrate lately with the constant stream of terrible news.

“I’m sorry,” Adeline said, “I wish I could have gotten there sooner. I can’t bring him back. But we can make sure the people that did this don’t get away with it.”

Writing Goal Updates

It definitely was a bit of a struggle writing again this week, but I did finish this chapter from my superhero story that I’ve been trying to write for a couple weeks now. This project is definitely helping me stay motivated. I felt like I had to write something for this prompt and to make this post, and now that I’ve gotten started with this chapter, I feel more motivated to get back into working on this story.

I think I’m going to start setting daily word count goals to really keep myself motivated and working. I thought just having a general goal of writing a couple chapters a week would work, but I’m definitely having a problem hitting that goal. I think breaking it down even more and having an actual number to work toward might help, since it definitely helps during NaNoWriMo. Hopefully this week, I’ll get a lot more writing done than I have been lately.

I’m sure there are some embarrassing things I’ve written that I’ve completely forgotten about, but here are the first two stories that came to mind:

I once wrote some fan fiction for the show CSI:NY. For no apparent reason, one of the main characters carried around (and talked to) a puppet who was his best friend. To be clear, I’m not embarrassed about writing fan fiction. I’ve read some that are absolutely amazing and I’m thinking about trying it again. I’m just embarrassed about the puppet. Fortunately, this story no longer exists.

I tried to write an epic space adventure story. I had a lot of ideas and it started off well, but once my characters left Earth, everything went horribly wrong. For some reason, instead of writing the thing I had set out to write, I just started picking random things and basing planets around them and the characters would fly around visiting those planets. There was a planet called Rainbow where everything was really colorful. There was a planet called Fluffy where everything was fluffy. There was a planet called Cheese where literally everything was made of cheese. There were little monsters made of cheese. At one point I just spent an entire paragraph listing types of cheese. It made absolutely no sense and nothing actually happened.

The only part I’m not embarrassed by is the planet called Cats where there were just cats everywhere because I would actually like to live there. I stand by the original idea for this story and maybe I’ll go back to it one day, but this was a disaster.

Looking back through my old writing has definitely made me feel better about what I’m writing now. It needs a lot of work and editing, but it’s not nearly as embarrassing as some things I’ve written before. And there aren’t any puppets.

Writing Goal Updates

This was a bad writing week, but I did a lot of reading, so that’s something.